Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

situation:On 27 April 2014, detailed regulations on the implementation of the death sentence, including for juveniles offenders, came into force following their publication in the Government gazette. The regulation only allows implementation of death penalty for intentional homicide or premeditated murder and only when the sentence is delivered by the Supreme Court. The regulation requires Ministry of Islamic Affairs to mediate between the victim’s family and the convict. Through this process, which reflects the Sharia principle of Qisas (retaliation), family members who are ‘warith’ (heirs) will be given an opportunity to pardon the convict with or without receiving blood money. The execution will not be carried out even if a single member of the family chooses to pardon the convict. The family is given a 10-day period following the mediation to come to a decision. Minister of Home Affairs Umar Naseer said the chances of killing an innocent person after completing all the procedures in the regulation were “far-fetched” and “almost impossible.” In January 2014, Minister Naseer had issued an order on the Correctional Services mandating the implementation of the death penalty by lethal injection. The executions would be carried out at a building under construction in Maafushi Prison. During the campaign for the November 2013 presidential election, incumbent President Abdulla Yameen took a strong position on law and order, campaigning in favour of implementing the death penalty and calling for harsher prison sentences. “Murder has to be punished with murder,” he stated. Maldives is a State Party to two UN treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbid capital punishment for crimes committed by persons below 18 years of age.

In 2017, 2 men were senteced to death and 18 people were on death row at the end of the year.As of May 2016, the juvenile court had sentenced a total of six young men to death for murders committed when they were minors. In 2015, three new death sentences were handed down, all against juvenile offenders. In 2014, two new death sentences were handed down, compared to thirteen in 2013. In 2012, two death sentences were imposed, while in 2011, for the first time in recent years, no new death sentences were handed down in the country. In the previous decade, 14 death sentences were passed. However, these sentences were never enforced and were commuted to life imprisonment under the power vested to the President in Clemency Act.

The last person to be executed in the Maldives after receiving a death sentence was in 1953 during the first republic of President Mohamed Ameen. Hakim Didi was charged with attempting to assassinate President Ameen using black magic. As of June 2016, there were around 17 people on death row, but none of whom had exhausted the appeal process.

The death penalty for juvenilesThe age of criminal responsibility in the Maldives is 10. While the new penal code does include the “immaturity excuse” – removing criminal responsibility from those under 15, Article 15c still allows for children as young as seven to be held accountable for so-called “hadd” offences under Islamic law. They include: theft, fornication, adultery, consumption of alcohol or other intoxicants and apostasy, for which punishment – including death – is prescribed in the Holy Koran itself. “Similar provisions in the recently ratified Penal Code, allowing for the application of the death penalty for crimes committed when below the age of 18, are also deeply regrettable,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on 30 April 2014.

The "humane" lethal injection In April 2014, detailed regulations on the implementation of the death sentence by lethal injection came into force, and in November 2015 the government included funds in the proposed state budget for 2016 to build a lethal injection chamber at the country’s main prison. However, on 17 June 2016, Home Minister Umar Naseer announced that the Maldives will implement the death penalty by hanging. “We had first considered implementing the death penalty by using lethal injections. But on speaking with countries with the experience, we found out that hanging was better,” he said. Since the current administration lifted a six-decade moratorium on capital punishment in 2014, the Supreme Court upheld four death sentence, all in 2016. On 9 August 2016, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein urged the Maldives to stick to a decades-long moratorium on imposing the death penalty. Zeid added that it is “deeply regrettable that a series of steps have been taken to resume executions in the country.”

United NationsOn 6 May 2015, the Maldives were reviewed under the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council. In its national report, the Government underlined that “the Maldives, since 1952, maintained one of the world’s longest standing de-facto moratoriums on death penalty,” but it noted that “Islam constitutes the basis of all laws made in the Maldives; hence it is unconstitutional to remove Hadd punishments such as the death penalty and flogging from the Penal Code.” The recommendations to maintain the moratorium on the death penalty in all circumstances, in particular for juvenile offenders, and work towards the de jure abolition of capital punishment were not accepted by the Maldives. On 19 December 2016, for the third time, the Maldives abstained on the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly. In 2010, for the first time, the Maldives had voted in favour of the Resolution. The Maldives had voted against such UN resolutions previously in 2007 and 2008. Premeditated murder, attempted assassination of the President, conspiracy against the sovereignty of the State, and acts of terrorism, are capital crimes in the Maldives.

The Supreme Court of the Maldives on 7 January 2019 quashed a magistrate court verdict of death by stoning, passed against a woman for extramarital sex.The apex court said in a statement that the verdict, which refers to the penal code, violates the Sexual Offenses Act, passed in 2014.Magistrate Judge Mohamed Moosa passed the sentence in absentia solely based on the woman’s confession; that she had committed fornication and had once before been married.

Naifaru magistrate court has sentenced a 25-year-old woman from Naifaru island to death by stoning, after she confessed to having extramarital sex, RaajjeMV reported on 7 January 2019.Magistrate Judge Mohamed Moosa passed the sentence in absentia solely based on her confession; that she had committed 'fornication' and had once before been married.The case was reported to the police in May of last year by the health center after they delivered the woman’s child, believed to have been conceived in the ‘unlawful sexual act’, the sentence says.The sentence makes no mention of the child's father, although RaajjeMV understands that he is native to an island in the same atoll and the family has 'no way to contact' him.

Hands off Cain is an international league of citizens and parliamentarians for the abolition of the death penalty in the world. It is a non-profit, non-violent, transnational and trans-national Partito Radicale founded in Brussels in 1993 and recognized in 2005 by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a development co-operation NGO.